NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has announced it will reduce its permanent workforce by roughly 8%. The move will impact about 530 people, with the lab also laying off 40 contractors. The announcement, which follows the reduction of 100 contractors last month, is due to uncertainty over NASA’s budget for the current financial year.
The US annual budget is usually set on 1 October, the beginning of the financial year. But in recent years, final agreement has gone well beyond that date. Budgeting for the present financial year has involved two so-called “continuing resolutions” that are intended to keep the government operating and paying its bills while negotiations continue.
The current resolution maintains government operations until early March. However, there is no certainty that the Democratic-run Senate and the Republican-run House of Representatives, both of which are operated with tiny majorities, will agree on a budget to even keep the government paying its bills beyond March.
Like other funding agencies, NASA has no certainty about its current budget and the present proposal includes a huge 63% cut to the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission as compared to last year.
NASA and the European Space Agency regard the MSR as a “next critical step” in plans to explore Mars. The mission is intended to pick up samples collected by the Perseverance Rover and then return them to Earth.
Yet in October, NASA’s Independent Review Board identified problems with the mission’s promotion, organization, scheduling, and financing, while noting that its original price tag of $4bn had risen to $5.3bn. The report also declared the mission’s 2028 launch date as “impossible”.
“While we still do not have a [financial year 24] appropriation or the final word from Congress on our MSL budget allocation, we are now in a position where we must take further significant action to reduce our spending,” JPL director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo to the lab’s employees. “These cuts are among the most challenging that we have had to make even as we have sought to reduce our spending in recent months.”
Supportive role
Leshin had attempted to hold off staff reductions by reducing 100 contractors, but she states that was “not enough” to make it through the reminder of the fiscal year. “[W]e must now move forward to protect against even deeper cuts later were we to wait,” she says, while adding that the layoffs would affect both technical and support areas of the lab.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission slammed by independent review panel
Yet JPL, which is based in Pasadena, California, has support from certain members in Congress and there are hopes that a better budget allocation than currently planned may allow the lab to rehire.
“I’m hopeful in the coming weeks we can work a deal with the Administration and Congress to restore funding to the levels necessary to rehire workers and provide the kinds of scientific discovery JPL has been on the frontlines of for decades,” Judy Chu, the Democratic member of the House of Representatives whose constituency includes JPL, noted in a statement.
Meanwhile, a panel that NASA commissioned to review progress on the MSR and respond to the conclusions of the Independent Review Board will announce its findings next month.
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- Source: https://physicsworld.com/a/nasas-jet-propulsion-laboratory-to-lay-off-more-than-500-employees/
